Project-Blu 'It Might Get Loud' Blu-ray Review, By Nate Boss

It Might Get Loud

By: Nate Boss, 1.18.2010

The Movie Itself:
Project-Blu Points Bulletin (The PB PB)

Pro:
A fascinating alternative take on a documentary
Beyond unique, beyond interesting, and engrossing
Possibly the best documentary I've seen in years, if not ever

Con:
Are these really the best representatives for the instrument for each generation?
I mean, I get Page, but The Edge and Jack White?
To each their own, I suppose

New "generations" in music come and go faster than that of cinema. Tastes change faster. Styles change, and new styles are created. There is more "experimentation," more pet projects. In film, the advent of new lenses, cameras, and special effects systems usher in change. Music, well it's hard to change from existing instruments and voices, save for the blasphemy known as autotune.

I used to be a hardcore music fan, spending paychecks in full entirely on discs and memorabilia. My tastes are, and were, bizarre at best. Over the years, though, I grew disenfranchised with music, particularly due to the unnatural sound that grew in popularity, the over-produced horseshit. This wasn't music, it was sampling. This wasn't singing...it was digitally manipulated noise that no human throat could emit.

Why did I sit down to It Might Get Loud, then? Curiosity, perhaps. All I knew of the program was the talent involved, a blend of three distinct generations and styles.

Jimmy Page.

The Edge.

Jack White.

All three maestros with their weapon of choice: the electric guitar. Innovators. Simply put, musical geniuses, unique in both their generations and in music as a whole.

On January 23, 2008, three musicians came together to discuss the electric guitar. And so begins the film. We get to journey through the musical backgrounds of each participant, with their own narration on how things came to be, how they got into music, and then the music business. It all comes together on occasion, with the three jamming, with their systems a mixture of simplicity, oversized grandeur, and innovational mixtures of instrumentation all put into one.

From the moment the film begins, you know you're not in for some stereotypical documentary on an instrument, which really is what the film amounts to. We see White crafting a guitar made out of a plank of wood, a few nails, and a coke bottle. An electric guitar, one that actually plays. The show takes less focus on the technical side of the creation of the electrical instrument, besides White's little work of art, and more on what the instrument itself can create, an array of sound, varying, all distinct, yet all from the same source. Manipulation and innovation is key when we look at The Edge, while the focus on Page is more on the upbringings in simpler times, when music was much different. White? Well, his focus is more on a talent in the rough, fighting through to become one of the most recognizable names in music.

Humor can be found in Page's past, while drama can be found in the Dublin past of U2's second-leading man. Dedication can be found the moment you see blood on the guitar strings, and is exemplified by the smears and piles of the red goo found on the instrument when finished. What can be found in It Might Get Loud is all things music, but mostly love, and appreciation. A solid little film, separated into chapters that jump between the pasts of each musician, It Might Get Loud is fascinating and eclectic, much like its participants, a surprising hour and a half if ever there were one.
Rating: 8/10

The Presentation:
It Might Get Loud is presented with an AVC MPEG-4 encode at 1080p in the 1.78:1 aspect ratio. If ever there were a difficult film to judge by its video merits, it would be this one.

It might get assorted. The program has an amazingly diverse array of film stock, a mixture of archival and vintage footage along with segment footage with each performer, and the collaboration footage. Each and every different scene seems to have a different film aesthetic. Grain can be nowhere, light, heavy, and even salt and peppery. Artifacts can be nowhere, somewhere, and everywhere. Macroblocking, chroma fringing, extreme banding, all are present when you take into account the varying grades and ages of footage used. There is a good amount of standard def footage mixed in there, but it gets the point across.

Delineation is fairly subpar in the more modern footage, and is the main concern to me in the collaboration footage. The individual sessions/footage, backgrounds and interviews, made for this film, have issues, particularly with artifacting. The point of buying It Might Get Loud isn't the video though, read on.

Will it get loud? Might it? It might, it may, and it does. It Might Get Loud gets loud with a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix that is beyond satisfying. It's exemplary. Sometimes stunning.

While the video footage is all over the place, in a bad way, the audio mix is all over the place in such a delicious manner. It doesn't matter what kind of video is on screen, from historical footage, to concert footage from decades ago, the sound mix is constantly present in each and every speaker. This movie, dedicated to discussing an instrument that creates audio, is superb in the diversity and range it provides the audio. It's an untamed beast, free from any leash or restraint, running wild like the sickest riff you've ever heard.

Bass presence is light, but there is an ever-present accent in the sound of any electric guitar. The echoing throughout the film is solid, coming through each speaker with a nice fade. Some backgrounds have a hum and whir, but it is obviously from the equipment each player uses, particularly the amazingly complex system utilized by The Edge. Music hits all angles wonderfully, coming through super clean and clear, with a mixture of ambience and crowd sounds where applicable. When all three guitarists play, the blend of noise is simply heaven. It isn't just noise anymore. The guitars localize, directionalize proper, echo beautifully, and, most importantly, each guitar's distinct roar can be discerned and differentiated clearly. I can guaran-damn-tee that the DVD release of It Might Get Loud can't handle the sonics on display here. Crank this one up, sit back, and enjoy.
Rating: 8/10 (video score: 6.6/10, audio score: 8.8/10)

The Extras:
Deleted Scenes

Audio Commentary
With Davis Guggenheim, Lesley Chilcott, and Thomas Tull

Toronto Film Festival Press Conference

MovieIQ
Includes "Loud" Playlist, in this modern day super-enhanced trivia track.

PMT
Trailers for Soul Power, This is It, and a generic BD promo.
Rating: 4/10

Overall:
With It Might Get Loud, it might be more than good. There's no might about it, as this film is excellent in nearly every way. A fascinating alternate take at a historical look at a musical instrument, told through three different sets of eyes. The video qualities in this release are random, but the audio is consistently solid. There is a reason this film is lingering in the Amazon best-sellers list. It's due to sheer awesome. Give it a look sometime, you may enjoy it, if you're a fan of any kind of modern music.
Rating: 7/10